I forgot about that - restaurants and just about every store kept a bowl full of book matches by the register. We kids always tried to get one or two books when the parents weren't looking.

Kids today are too supervised. It's kind of sad to know that my grandkids can never go into their uncle's old Marine footlocker from WWII, find two hand grenades, take them outside, pull the pin on one, toss it between the houses, and run and hide for a few minutes, without some nosy parent stopping them to ask, "whatcha got there?" That's how we, er, I mean, "kids" learn the scientific method: form a hypothesis ("if this goes off, I have a real hand grenade left"), test it (described above), then modify the hypothesis based on the results ("cool, I've got two dud grenades to play war with.") Granted, the modified hypothesis has a hole in it - and not that I'd have any personal experience with this at age 10 or so...